Antennas used in miniature portable communications receivers, such as pagers, have generally been magnetic loop antennas optimized only to respond to the H-field component of an incident electromagnetic wave. Such prior art magnetic loop antennas were manufactured with either round or flat conductors formed as single or multiple loop antennas, with or without magnetic materials, such as a ferrite core. The choice of design, with or without the core, was primarily dictated by the frequency of operation and the available space within the receiver housing to accommodate the antenna. Since these miniature portable communications receivers were generally worn on the body, such as in a shirt pocket or clipped to the belt, the loop was generally tuned so as to couple to the magnetic fields which encircle a human body in an electromagnetic field, thereby enhancing the sensitivity of the receiver. While such a portable communications receiver benefit from the "body enhancement" effect, this benefit was often at the expense of degraded sensitivity when the receiver was removed from the body, or in a free field mode of operation as would occur when the portable communications receiver was placed on a table or desk.
While the prior art antenna designs have provided adequate performance in portable communications receivers having a substantial loop cross-sectional area, these designs have proved to be inadequate in portable communication receiver designs having extremely low profiles, such as encountered in housings for thin sheet-like receivers as in a "credit card" style pager. There is a need for an antenna that can be simply manufactured and provides excellent performance in such a low profile portable communications receiver.